Why Does My Child With Verbal Apraxia Lick His Hand?

Verbal apraxia, also called dyspraxia, involves problems with movement and coordination, known as a motor learning disability. Children with verbal apraxia often have language problems that may include perception and thought processing issues. If your pediatrician suspects or has diagnosed your child with verbal apraxia, it is important to examine all of the signs, including hand licking.

Statistics

• According to The Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America (CASANA), research regarding the prevalence of apraxia in children is lacking. No known reports exist about the incidence of hand licking in children with apraxia. The estimate is that approximately 1 to 10 of every 1,000 children or approximately three to five percent of children have speech impairment.

Symptoms

• The symptoms of verbal apraxia often vary based on the age and severity of the motor learning disability, but can include difficulty sitting, crawling, walking, speaking, standing, difficulty potty training, and problems with establishing a vocabulary. Many parents of children with verbal apraxia have difficulty understanding their children. Later in childhood, the child may show signs of having a hard time with buttons, zippers, getting dressed, and other motor skills like jumping and playing, to problems with puzzles and scissors. Children with apraxia often have a hard time focusing for an extended period of time and will have problems with fidgeting and bumping into things.

Diagnosis

• According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the primary diagnostic methods involves a meeting with a speech language pathologist or occupational therapist who looks for the presence of multiple symptoms and rules out others, like tongue problems, muscle weakness, or problems with language comprehension.

Communicative Methods

• Children with verbal apraxia may rely on nonverbal methods of communication to relay their message to others. One of the common tendencies for a child with verbal apraxia is to lick their hand. Pantomime may be used to express what the child has difficulty saying. Licking one's hand might indicate that they are hungry or thirsty.

Treatment

• Speech and occupational therapy can help children with apraxia who may lick their hands. A speech or occupational therapist may have the ability to work with your child to come up with methods that take away behavior like hand licking and replace it with another form of communication, such as using a picture, words on cards, or a communication device like a portable computer to indicate their needs. Learning sign language can also help to augment speech not well understood.